Poetics and Ruminations

Birthday of THE BOOK OF FORMS

Fifty (50) years ago, on 19 April 1968, I wrote in my journal, "The Book of Forms has arrived! It has the most incredible art nouveau cover." The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, first edition, by Lewis Turco, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Paperback original.

The New Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics (second edition of The Book of Forms), Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986 (www.UPNE.com),  ISBN 0874513804, cloth; 0874513812, paper.

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Third Edition, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000. ISBN 1584650419, cloth; ISBN 1584650222, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. “The Poet’s Bible."

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.

Companion volumes:

The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship, Hanover: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com), 1999. ISBN 0874519543, cloth; ISBN 0-874519-55-1, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Forms. A Choice  “Outstanding academic title” for 2000.

The Book of Dialogue: How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry by Lewis Turco, Hanover: University Press of New England, (www.UPNE.com), 2004. ISBN 1-584653-61-2, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Forms and The Book of Literary Terms.

An Ordinary Evening in Cleveland

An Anthology of Poems Celebrating the 90th Birthday

of Cleveland Poet Russell Atkins

 

AN ORDINARY EVENING IN CLEVELAND

by Lewis Turco

 

I.

              Just so it goes: the day, the night —

       what have you. There is no one on TV;

              shadows in the tube, in the street.

In the telephone there are echoes and mumblings,

              the buzz of hours falling thru wires.

 

              And hollow socks stumbling across

       the ceiling send plaster dust sifting down

              hourglass walls. Felix the cat has

been drawn on retinas with a pencil of light.

              I wait gray, small in my cranny,

 

       for the cardboard tiger on the

kitchen table to snap me, shredded, from

       the bowl.

II.

                   Over the trestle go

the steel beetles grappled tooth-and-tail — over and

              over and over there smokestacks

 

              lung tall hawkers into the sky's

       spittoon. The street has a black tongue: do you

              hear him, Mistress Alley, wooing

you with stones? There are phantoms in that roof's trousers;

              they kick the wind. The moon, on a

 

              ladder, is directing traffic

       now. You can hardly hear his whistle. The

              oculist's jeep wears horn rim wind

shields; the motor wears wires on its overhead valves —

              grow weary, weary, sad siren,

 

              you old whore. It's time to retire.

 

III.

       The wail of the child in the next room quails

              like a silverfish caught in a

thread. It is quiet now. The child's sigh rises to

              flap with a cormorant's grace through

 

              the limbo of one lamp and a

       slide-viewer in your fingers: I cannot

              get thin enough for light to shine

my color in your eyes; there is no frame but this for

              the gathering of the clan. Words

 

              will stale the air. Come, gather up

       our voices in the silent butler and

              pour them into the ashcan of

love. Look, my nostrils are dual flues; my ears are

              the city dump; my eyes are the

 

              very soul of trash; my bitter

       tongue tastes like gasoline in a ragged

              alley.

IV.

                     The child cries again. Sounds

rise by the riverflats like smoke or mist in time's

              bayou. We are sewn within seines

 

              of our own being, thrown into

       menaces floating in shadows, taken

              without volition like silver

fish in an undertow down the river, down time

              and smog of evenings.

V.

                              The child cries.

VI.

              Do you hear the voice of wire?

       Do you hear the child swallowed by carpets,

              the alley eating the city,

rustling newsprint in the street begging moonlight with

                  a tin cup and a blindman's cane?

 

From In The Company of Russell Atkins, edited by Diane Kendig and Robert E McDonough, Cleveland, OH: Red Giant Books, http://[email protected], November 2016.

 

The Lament of Turco the Terrible

 Lewis Turco on his 82nd birthday, May 2, 2016

 Listen to Lewis Turco read his poem, "The Lament of Turko the Terrible":

 

"She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko the terrible

and laughed with others when he sang:

                    I am the boy

                    That can enjoy

                    Invisibility." — from Ulysses by James Joyce.

 

Some folk call me Turco,

Turko the terrible Turk.

James Joyce wrote about me

Through some fantastic quirk —

For he could not know of me,

Since I had not been born.

Still, he'd the sense to counsel

The ages and to warn

 

That I'd appear

To strain your ear

And hospitality:

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

 

I have been pantomiming

Now over eighty years,

Scribbling and inditing

So much you'd think the tears

Of editors and readers

Would swamp the Muses' boat.

But no, not even Turco

Can sink it — it will float

 

Down Moby's road

Despite my load

Of inability.

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

 

What's fine about my singing

Is not my crackling voice,

But that, though I go inkling,

The world still has its choice,

Like Royce, to miss or laugh at

The witless fogs I pen.

The stars, they go on spinning;

The Earth now and again

 

Churns as I sing,

And fall and spring

At things as they may be.

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

 

From The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2004, 460 pp., ISBN 1-932842-00-4, jacketed cloth; ISBN 1-932842-01-2, trade paperback. Also available from Amazon.com in a Kindle edition.